Electronic communications between persons for both business and personal use have increased substantially in recent years. In addition to e-mail communications and telephone communications, additional forms of communication have become common, including instant messaging, social network messaging and commenting, message board posting, and text messaging to name a few examples.
Conventional computing systems and devices are configured to support applications such as e-mail or instant messaging that implement an address book. The address book may be accessed by a user of the application (or by the application itself) for a variety of purposes. Typically, the address book is unique for a given application and may contain unique application specific data.
In conventional applications, each address book entry must be manually entered and maintained by a user. Over time, some entries become outdated due to a lack of regular maintenance, while other entries become obsolete (e.g., entries of individuals with whom no further communications are intended). As the number of contacts grows, the maintenance of the address book may become difficult and time consuming.